Facebook has begun testing a slew of changes to the News Feed, including friend list filters and Smart Lists that automatically categorize your friends.

The changes seem to be aimed at making the content within the News Feed more relevant. These changes, as far as we can ascertain from screenshots sent to us, show that Facebook is dividing the News Feed into lists, much like Google+ has done with Circles. "Feed filters make it easy to see a selected set of friend's updates in one place and share exclusive with them," Facebook's guide to the new feature states.

Facebook has announced that former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles has been added to its board of directors.

Bowles served as President Bill Clinton’s head of the Small Business Administration in 1993 before becoming deputy White House chief of staff in 1994 and chief of staff in 1996. Before that, Bowles founded his own investment bank and co-founded venture capital firm Kitty Hawk Capital and private equity firm Carousel Capital.

Bowles is also the president emeritus of the University of North Carolina system and is currently co-chair of President Barack Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

Facebook intends to launch its long-rumored music service next month with Spotify, MOG and Rdio as three of the company's launch partners, Mashable has learned.

The music and media platform will be announced at Facebook's f8 developer conference on Sept. 22. It will allow users to listen to music from within Facebook.com. Evidence of Facebook's music platform first surfaced in the code of Facebook's video chat service.

According to two sources familiar with the matter, Facebook will not directly host or stream any music or media. Instead, it will rely on partners to provide the content. This is in contrast to Apple, Google and Amazon's strategy of hosting music content on their servers… Continue reading...

Facebook has decided to shut down Facebook Deals, its four-month-old Groupon competitor.

“After testing Deals for four months, we’ve decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks,” Facebook told Reutersin a statement.

The product, which launched in late April, was an attempt to bring the popular daily deals phenomenon to Facebook’s 750+ million users. It launched in San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, Atlanta and San Diego, but quickly rolled out to other cities.

The market for daily deals has become more competitive in recent months, however, and many are questioning the entire business model in light of Groupon’s questionable financials.

“We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses,” Facebook said in its statement. “We’ve learned a lot from our test and we’ll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses.” We have reached out to Facebook for more information.

Facebook has decided to shut down Facebook Deals, its four-month-old Groupon competitor.

"After testing Deals for four months, we've decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks," Facebook told Reutersin a statement.

The product, which launched in late April, was an attempt to bring the popular daily deals phenomenon to Facebook's 750+ million users. It launched in San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, Atlanta and San Diego, but quickly rolled out to other cities.

The market for daily deals has become more competitive in recent months, however, and many are questioning the entire business model in light of Groupon's questionable financials.

Facebook has rolled out a new version of its popular Photos app, complete with speed improvements and larger images.

“Now, the photos you share on Facebook are bigger (720 pixels to 960 pixels) and load twice as fast, giving you quicker access to more detailed images,” Facebook’s Justin Shaffer said in a blog post. “Photos you’ve already uploaded to your profile will also be displayed at this higher resolution.”

In addition to the increased photo size, Facebook is rolling out a revamped photo viewer. The new viewer takes up more screen real estate (since photos are now larger) and reduces clutter so users can focus on the photo and nothing else.

“The light box is now set against a simple white background that puts more of the focus on the photo, and less on the surrounding frame,” Shaffer noted.

Facebook has rolled out a new version of its popular Photos app, complete with speed improvements and larger images.

“Now, the photos you share on Facebook are bigger (720 pixels to 960 pixels) and load twice as fast, giving you quicker access to more detailed images,” Facebook’s Justin Shaffer said in a blog post. “Photos you’ve already uploaded to your profile will also be displayed at this higher resolution.”

In addition to the increased photo size, Facebook is rolling out a revamped photo viewer. The new viewer takes up more screen real estate (since photos are now larger) and reduces clutter so users can focus on the photo and nothing else.

“The light box is now set against a simple white background that puts more of the focus on the photo, and less on the surrounding frame,” Shaffer noted.

Facebook unveiled a massive wave of privacy changes on Tuesday. It’s one of the biggest privacy overhauls in the company’s history, one that includes more than a dozen changes to profiles, status updates, locations and tags.

In fact, there are so many changes that it’s easy to get confused about what changes Facebook is making and what impact they will have on your privacy. The updates are significant enough that Facebook will make every single one of its 750+ million users go through a tutorial about the updated privacy settings.

That’s why we’ve written this short guide to all the changes Facebook has implemented. Refer to this page for a quick rundown of all the new privacy features now available on the world’s largest social network.

Screenshots: Facebook Privacy Changes

Privacy Controls: Profile Editing

You can edit the visibility of individual parts of your profiles right from the profile editing page. In the past, this had to be done from the Privacy Settings page.

Tag Approvals

Facebook has implemented tag approvals. You now need to approve location or photo tags before they appear on your Facebook profile. This feature can be turned off.

Photo Tag Approvals

You can accept or reject photo tags right from the photo page.

View Profile As

The "View Profile As" feature, which lets you see your Facebook Profile page as one of your friends, is now prominently placed on your profile page.

Greater Control of Status Updates

Facebook has made it easier to understand who sees your published content. Icons indicate whether a status update will be public, appear only to friends or has been customized for a friend group or list.

Adding Locations to Status Updates

Places has been integrated into Facebook's Publisher Bar. The result is that location is more prominent in Facebook. The mobile apps will now have a "Nearby" icon that replaces the old "Places" icon.

More Control Over Photo Privacy

When untagging yourself from a photo, you will also be given the option to request the photo be taken down or block that person entirely.

Profiles

The major privacy changes to Facebook Profiles include:

Greater profile control: Profile visibility controls now appear directly next to content when you edit your profile. For example, if you only want your close friends to see which music you like, you can change it directly from the profile editing page.

In-line cues: Facebook will display a globe, friend or gear icon to indicate whether a piece of content is public, only seen by friends or customized for a friend group or list.

“View Profile As”: The “View Profile As” feature has been moved from the Privacy Settings Page to the top right-hand corner of the user profile. This is designed to make it more accessible.

Overhaul of the Privacy Page: The privacy overhaul will result in a much cleaner and simpler Privacy Page, since most of the privacy settings are now integrated at the profile page level.

Tags

The major privacy changes to Facebook Tags include:

Tag reviews: Facebook has implemented a system where users can approve or reject photo, status or location tags before they appear on their profiles. This profile can be turned on or off, depending on user preference.

Photo tagging changes: Because of the tag reviews feature, Facebook felt comfortable allowing a user to tag anybody in a photo, regardless of whether they are friends. This makes it simpler to tag people in group shots. Users must approve these tags before they appear on a user’s profile.

Tags in the Publisher Box: It’s easier to see who is being tagged in a status update. The left-hand side of the Publisher Box now includes an area for managing tags.

New untagging features: If a user untags herself from a photo, she will be given the option to send a request to the photo’s uploader to remove it. She will also have the option of blocking that person entirely.

Status Updates & Location

The major privacy changes to location-sharing and status updates include:

Public updates: The “Everyone” option in status updates has been renamed “Public” for greater clarity.

No more lock icon: The lock icon under the Publisher Box has also been changed. It will now display the globe, friend or gear icon based on whether the update is public, for friends or custom.

Facebook Places integration: Facebook Places has been integrated into the Publisher Box. Users can now tag a location into any status update. The same applies to photos and photo albums.

No more GPS restriction: Users can now tag any location in a status update or photo, regardless of whether they’re actually nearby. This makes it possible tag a location for a photo album after the user has returned home.

Mobile changes: The Facebook Places icon will no longer appear in the mobile apps. Instead a “Nearby” icon will take its place. It will display which users have tagged their location nearby.

Reactions

We asked some privacy and safety groups to respond to Facebook’s privacy changes. Here are two of those responses:

1. Electronic Frontier Foundation:

“We have been asking Facebook for granular controls over privacy setting for some time now, and are pleased that Facebook is now providing inline controls. We also appreciate the introduction of greater control over tagging.

Social network services must ensure that users have ongoing privacy and control over personal information stored with the service. To effectuate that, users need clear user interface that allows them to make informed choices about who sees their data and how it is used. We look forward to seeing how these controls work in operation, to see if users understand them and it reduces the amount of unintentional over sharing on Facebook.

It is also good to see more competition on privacy controls between social networks. Google’s introduction of circles gave users of Plus inline controls for sharing, and now Facebook is providing more granular inline controls. We hope this trend of competition continues.

One disappointment is that Facebook is considering phasing out the setting that could disallow users to prevent their friends from checking them into places. As we understand it, there is no set deadline for this control, but it will be available for at least 60 days, and those who select the option will be grandfathered into keeping it. Even if a user does not want or need the control now, we recommend that they select the option now, to be sure that this control remains available to them.”

2. Connect Safety:

“This is a significant step forward in Facebook privacy for users of all ages – one that all of us Safety Advisory board members really liked. Giving users the chance to think about the level of exposure they want with each status update or photo posted encourages everybody to be a little more mindful about our social-media use, and that’s a good thing as we all work out the social norms of social media.”

Facebook is launching one of the largest privacy overhauls in its history. The initiative will make it clearer with whom you’re sharing photos, status updates and locations.

“We want to make it easier to share with who you want, no matter what it is,” Facebook Product Manager Kate O’Neill told Mashable during a preview of the new features.

The changes, more than a dozen in all, fall into two key areas: privacy changes to user profiles and changes to how users share content. They will roll out during the next few days.

Profile controls will now be embedded right on the profile page. In the past, changing settings such as who can see your photos or musical interests was done through the bulky Privacy Settings page. Now those settings appear on the right-hand side of nearly every section of the user profile when you’re editing your settings.

Facebook has also decided to bring the “View Profile As” feature directly onto the profile page. This feature allows you to view your profile page as one of your friends would see it. It was previously available in the privacy settings section, but will now appear on the top right-hand corner whenever you visit your profile.

The biggest change to profile privacy controls though is the addition to tag reviews. O’Neill told Mashable that users wanted greater control over who tagged them and how those tags appeared on their profiles. Users will now be able to approve or reject tags before they become visible to anybody else. This includes photos, locations and posts.

Changes to Sharing

The second set of changes affect how you share content. The Publisher bar has been modified and now includes three elements: locations, tags and control over who can see that status update.

You can make it so friends can tag you without approval, but you must approve tags from non-friends — which leads to another change to profiles: You can now tag anybody in a post or a photo, regardless of whether that person is a Facebook friend, subject to tag approval. This makes it possible to tag a large group of people from work or an event.

“Because I share an experience with them doesn’t mean I want to be Facebook friends with them,” O’Neill says.

Places has also been integrated directly into the Publisher bar. You can tag a location from the browser or the mobile apps. In addition, the restriction to tag places only a short distance from your GPS location has been scrapped. For instance, if you were at a party but didn’t write about it until you got home, you can now tag that location in your status update.

As a result of this change, the Places icon in the iOS and Android apps have been removed. In its place is a “Nearby” icon that displays recent checkins in your area. Checking into a location happens from the status update. Users can also tag locations to photo albums or individual photos or videos.

Facebook has also made some changes to the status controls. In the past, a lock icon controlled who could see your status update. Now that icon will change based on whether it’s a public update, one meant for friends or a custom update to a friend list or group. The “Everyone” option has been renamed to “Public” for clarity. You also now have the option of changing the visibility of status updates even after they’re published.

The last change to sharing content involves untagging. Facebook says that users were unclear what untagging themselves from photos actually meant, so it has provided more options for when they untag themselves from Facebook content. Now there are three options: untagging yourself from a photo, asking the photo uploader to remove the photo and blocking that person on Facebook.

Check out the screenshots of the changes below, and let us know what you think of the many privacy changes in the comments.

Privacy Controls: Profile Editing

You can edit the visibility of individual parts of your profiles right from the profile editing page. In the past, this had to be done from the Privacy Settings page.

Tag Approvals

Facebook has implemented tag approvals. You now need to approve location or photo tags before they appear on your Facebook profile. This feature can be turned off.

Photo Tag Approvals

You can accept or reject photo tags right from the photo page.

View Profile As

The "View Profile As" feature, which lets you see your Facebook Profile page as one of your friends, is now prominently placed on your profile page.

Greater Control of Status Updates

Facebook has made it easier to understand who sees your published content. Icons indicate whether a status update will be public, appear only to friends or has been customized for a friend group or list.

Adding Locations to Status Updates

Places has been integrated into Facebook's Publisher Bar. The result is that location is more prominent in Facebook. The mobile apps will now have a "Nearby" icon that replaces the old "Places" icon.

More Control Over Photo Privacy

When untagging yourself from a photo, you will also be given the option to request the photo be taken down or block that person entirely.